


take my hand, wreck my plans.

by dwoht



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, angsty fluff, basically they just talk about their future, i think it's cute, like fluff but angst, this was for a tumblr prompt so it's short but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:36:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28666332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwoht/pseuds/dwoht
Summary: “What if I can promise you’ll get this future that I see for us, and more,” Toni murmurs.“You can’t,” Shelby whispers back, but with a soft kiss it fades into a breathy, “Okay.”or,Toni asks Shelby why she's so afraid of going home.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 36
Kudos: 429





	take my hand, wreck my plans.

At first, Toni thinks it was just a one-off. Maybe bad day, or maybe the fact that Shelby was clearly struggling with the kiss that had occurred, or maybe it could really have been anything.

But then it happens again, and again, and again. Leah brings up the plane that flew overhead, Martha talks about seeing her mom, or Fatin jokes about ordering a thousand dollars worth of DoorDash when they get back, and... Shelby retreats.

Sometimes it’s mental, just sort of detaching from the conversation. Her smile fades down into that sort of close-mouthed grimace she does, and she starts playing with the sand or busying herself with sorting the firewood. Other times, it’s physical. Giving a small “excuse me,” or a curt upturn of her lips, she shuffles off in another direction.

It’s pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, if the immediately leaving any time it comes up is any indication, but Toni can’t help herself. She never was the most patient of people, but she _does_ have the decency to try and wait for the right moment, which presents itself as late that evening.

For being stranded on a deserted island, it’s shockingly cozy to be leaning up against a log with Shelby wrapped up behind her. The crackle of the fire just kisses the tip of her nose, and she hates to ruin it, but the other girls have long since been asleep, and it’s hard enough as it is to get any actual alone time.

She shuffles around for a few seconds, trying to figure out what to say, but she can tell Shelby has noticed and is about to ask her what’s wrong, so she blurts out, “Why don’t you like talking about getting rescued?”

And, okay, it’s not the subtlest she’s ever been.

Shelby’s arms around her immediately tense, but Toni’s fingers come up to her sleeved bicep, and the gentle rub she falls into manages to ease her back into a relaxed slump.

“What do you mean?” Shelby asks cautiously.

“You know,” Toni says, shrugging back. “You always seem kinda down when it gets brought up.”

“Oh,” Shelby says, as if even _she’s_ surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t intend to —“

“No,” Toni interrupts quickly. She flushes at how utterly wrong this is going. “I wasn’t trying to accuse you or anything. I’m just curious.” She has an urge to turn and get a glimpse of Shelby’s face to try to gauge what she’s feeling, but decides eye contact would be too much, and settles for, “I want to know.”

“Well, it’s complicated.” The exhale that follows is heavy, breathing a small puff of air onto the back of Toni’s neck, but it doesn’t seem to actually expel any of Shelby’s agitation. Then, “Or, maybe it’s not. I don’t want to go home, Toni.”

Toni gets as far as, “But —“ when Shelby cuts her off.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” she says, and her tone is laced with a strange sort of fear. “My past, my family, my friends, my future.”

“How can you know your future?” Toni laughs, but Shelby doesn’t share the amusement, and just sighs again.

“It’s been planned for me since… forever, I guess,” Shelby tells her. There’s no humor in her chuckle that follows. “I’m going to follow Andrew to wherever he goes to college, and then I’m going to study something totally toss-away, and drop out whenever he wants to get married. Stay-at-home mom, PTA on Thursday’s, drinking every evening, and eventually, a slow, painful death.”

“Oh.”

This time, Shelby’s giggle _is_ a bit amused.

“Look, my point is that all that stuff you said about being free here?” she asks. Toni nods. “You’re right. And I want that. But that’s _here_. I don’t know who I’m kidding trying to… be myself, but there’s a Shelby out there that I’ll have to return to.”

It immediately catches in Toni’s ear how she struggles over the phrase ‘be myself,’ as if she doesn’t even know what that’s like.

  
Toni shifts, turning on her side so she’s curled in towards Shelby’s chest, and coaxes their gazes together. “Can I tell you what I see? For us?”

Shelby looks away. “Please, don’t.”

“Hey.” Toni presses a soft kiss to the underside of her jaw until Shelby starts looking down, kissing her away up the side of her face until their lips meet. She pulls back just enough to meet her eyes. “Let me tell you what I see for us.”

“And when I don’t get it?” Shelby asks helplessly. “That’ll be worse than never hearing it at all.”

“What if I can promise you’ll get all of it, and more,” Toni murmurs.

“You can’t,” Shelby whispers back, but with a soft kiss it fades into a breathy, “Okay.”

Sentimentality has never really been Toni’s thing. Not now, not ever. Even comforting Martha through her whole thing with the doctor was more physical hugs and just _being_ there for her. Talking just isn’t Toni’s strong suit, unless she’s cussing someone out.

The truth is, though, she’s thought about this a _lot_.

She tells Shelby as much, and explains, “Growing up in the foster system, you always picture your dream home, you know? And mine has changed a lot over the years. In the beginning, I just wanted to be back with my mom. We grew up in a little apartment on the edge of the reservation. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Small, but it was cozy.”

“That sounds nice,” Shelby hums.

“It was,” Toni agrees, but then emphasizes, “It _was_. Slowly, it fell apart. She stopped cleaning, so dirty dishes piled up. Stopped doing laundry, so I had to learn to use the washing machine, but then eventually we ran out of soap. Barely any food, water and heat turned off…” she trails off.

“Toni…” Shelby starts, but it falls flat.

“Anyway,” she continues, “that’s when I went into the system. But for so long, my dream home was _that_ one, only I always pictured it the way it was in the beginning. My mom cooking me dinner, and teaching me what she was doing as she did it. Tucking me into bed, and making sure I had my stuffed basketball pillow.”

“Of course,” Shelby says, rolling her eyes.

Toni grins. “Baller since day one. And I’d sleep through the night, drifting off to the sound of her watching TV, and in the morning she’d shake me awake, and there would be breakfast when I went into the kitchen before school. That was my dream home. Just that, and her.”

“What happened?” Shelby asks, sounding almost too afraid to pose the question.

“I grew up,” Toni says, clenching her jaw at the way she feels her throat tightening. “I grew up, and I learned that dreams don’t come true. My mom wasn’t made to be a mother, she never was. And that’s not her fault, it’s just the way it is. That home wasn’t meant to be mine, it definitely wasn’t meant to be hers, and it was — _is_ — never going to be _ours_.”

“That’s a lot to give up on,” Shelby whispers, pressing a soft kiss to her ear.

Toni closes her eyes and relaxes into Shelby’s lips. “Yeah. But as I got moved from home to home, and the wish changed. The first time I went to a really nice, stable home — and, I mean really nice, like food from Safeway, not Walmart or any of that, a fence without peeling paint, sheets that didn’t have holes in them, _that_ became my new dream home.”

She must pause for too long, because Shelby prompts, “But?”

“But they moved to Florida, and —“ she sucks in a breath. “And they didn’t want to bring me with them.”

“Oh.”

“One time,” Toni says, a chuckle bubbling up, “I decided my dream home was, like, a full on mansion. An indoor pool _and_ basketball court, twenty bedrooms, a giant yard, and one of those addresses with, like, six digits, you know?”

“So, a house that Fatin’s parents would sell?” Shelby teases.

Toni feels Shelby’s tighten around her as she laughs, and she nods. “Exactly. Like one of those houses.”

“Well, what changed your mind?” Shelby asks, and really, Toni has never been able to figure out what _did_ change her mind, until now.

“It would be lonely,” she decides on. “Playing basketball in an indoor court in my home would be a great luxury, sure, but my community was built by hopping into pick-ups at the park with total strangers. So many bedrooms might be nice for guests, not that I have more than, like, three friends —“

“Seven now,” Shelby interjects, and Toni can feel her smile against the top of her head.

She snuggles further under her chin. “Yeah, so maybe I need six other bedrooms.” She pauses. “We’d share, obviously.”

“Presumptuous much?” Shelby scoffs.

“That’s not what you were saying —“

“Alright, finish your story,” Shelby says, cutting her off, but there’s a smile and a flush to her cheeks when their eyes meet again.

“Well, anyway, some of my favorite moments from my childhood, or even all the homes I’ve been in, is being able to feel the presence of other people,” Toni says. “My mom watching TV as I fall asleep, Martha breathing in the bed next to mine, the chatter of the older kids that had a later bedtime. You don’t get that in a big house.”

“No,” Shelby agrees, and it’s more melancholy than anything.

“I’ve had damn near every version of a dream home in mind,” Toni sighs. “An apartment in the middle of somewhere crazy like New York City, a quiet cottage off in the nature of New Zealand, a cabin in the woods of Washington, a beach house in California. If it exists, at one point I wanted it.”

“And now?” Shelby asks.

The words feel heavy and unnatural rolling off her tongue, but the beam of sunshine of a smile Shelby gives her when she says, “Now, it’s you,” is worth it a million times over. Quickly, before Shelby can say something that’s guaranteed to be painfully sappy, she adds, “And me. _Us_. That’s home.”

“I like the sound of that,” Shelby breathes, and when her fingers lift Toni’s chin up so they can meet in a kiss, Toni wonders when it became that _she_ says the sappy things. Shelby is the first to pull away, eyes wild in the dim light of the fire, and her breath is hot in Toni’s mouth when she mumbles, “Tell me more.”

“We’ll move to New York City,” Toni says, until Shelby furrows her eyebrows. “California?” she tries again. Shelby smiles. “Right, so we’ll move to California, more up North so it isn’t as freakishly warm.”

“Beach house,” Shelby mumbles.

Toni turns to look at her slightly. “Yeah?”

“Santa Cruz,” she confirms.

Toni eyes the way the fire is dancing in her eyes with an almost amusement. “You’ve thought about this, then?” 

“We all have reasons for dreaming about home,” Shelby shrugs. “And I like Santa Cruz.”

“I’ve never been,” Toni says.

“I’ll show you,” Shelby promises.

“Alright,” Toni continues, “so a beach house in Santa Cruz. Maybe a dog, so I can take him on runs.”

“There’s no way you run,” Shelby mutters.

Toni scoffs. “Excuse me?”

“Not with form like that,” Shelby argues.

“When did you become such an expert on running?” Toni huffs.

“Since I ran a half-marathon when I was fourteen, and then another every year since,” Shelby says, grinning. Toni practically growls. “It’s okay,” Shelby says, soothing her with a kiss to the temple. “We’ll get a dog, and we can all go on runs _together_.”

“And I’ve always wanted, like, a really cool looking house,” Toni muses. “You know those ones with a bright red door, or the kitchen is painted some crazy color like lime green? I want a house like that.”

“I could go for a bright red door,” Shelby says thoughtfully, “though could we make it yellow?”

“Anything that tells me I’m home as soon as I see it,” Toni says, and she can’t even believe she’s telling Shelby all this. “I want to walk in, and know that it _must_ be my home because nobody else’s is like that. I want to walk in, and know that it’s a home I made for myself.”

“How would we decorate it?” Shelby asks.

“Just, like, a bunch of stuff from our friends,” Toni says, poking at the fire with a stick to keep it going. “You know, Martha would give us a woven tapestry or something to hang up in the living room. Fatin would buy is a seriously expensive couch.”

“And a TV to match, please,” Shelby says. She hums a bit, playing with a bit of hair that’s escaped Toni’s ponytail. “Dot would buy us a record player, and a bunch of stuff to listen to. And Nora all her favorite board games.”

“Rachel would help us move in,” Toni guesses. “Heavy-lifting and all that. Leah would…” she trails off.

“Punch us in the face?” Shelby offers.

Toni rolls her eyes. “No, she’d get us books, probably. Or, maybe a plant.”

“We should put a garden in the front,” Shelby says, shifting her weight slightly further back. “Yeah? Some flowers, a tree, and we’ll have a front porch, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Toni agrees. She shrugs. “So, anyway. That’s what I see for us. Eventually.”

And then the atmosphere drops, and suddenly the fire isn’t as warm as it was before, and Shelby’s arms aren’t as tight, and she exhales heavily. “I don’t know if I can wait for eventually.”

“I promise we will have it,” Toni murmurs. She kisses away Shelby’s doubt as best she can, and just whispers, “I promise,” again and again and again, hoping that Shelby starts to believe at least one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> quinnfebrey on tumblr! come chat!


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